For sixteen years, I was a writer and designer of video games in various buildings mostly full of men. I thought of them collectively as Boyland—the straight, white, gamer bros who owned the industry, top to bottom. There were some women here and there, but not often in production; they were in sales or in marketing or in communications. One studio I briefly freelanced for openly made it a point never to hire any women full time; Boyland thought it was too distracting. Women were never designers or artists or programmers or staff writers. Occasionally, they would become producers, but sometimes even after that happened, Boyland would drive them away, as they did to my friend J. She still brings it up when I see her now, sometimes.
The exceptions were notable. Once, a woman was the director of my project. She was tiny and fierce and wandered around the office wrapped in a blanket late at night, giving orders to Boyland and ignoring it when they paid her back by getting drunk and leaving death threats on her answering machine. It was a joke, they said. She didn’t think it was all that funny.
That director eventually left, but a few years later, another woman became my boss. Boyland got rid of her, too, but not until after she’d ordered the place to put free tampons in all the bathrooms, so I didn’t have to slink there with one hidden up my sleeve. I remembered thinking it was the most radical act I’d ever witnessed. When she left, I gave her a silver bracelet with a lock on it and wrote a note about her newfound freedom. But we both knew it wasn’t exactly that. She had become too powerful and had been exiled. That was my take, anyway; that was what happened to girls in Boyland. We had to be careful. We had to learn to cuss like sailors and dress like guys. We had to avoid girly clothes and hide our boobs and not wear pink, unless it was ironic. We had to be able to talk about science fiction and watch war movies. I still do.
Twenty-five years ago, the women’s bathroom was my personal office because I was the only woman on the floor, at least to my knowledge. I kept things there and joked that I should move my desk. There were plenty of jokes, and Boyland’s jokes were worse than mine. Once, I walked into a room for a meeting I was leading. A programmer friend of mine glanced up and said, “Oh look, the stripper’s here.” People laughed. Maybe I laughed, too, I can’t remember. I probably didn’t say anything at all. I wanted to be invited to lunch, and to be invited to lunch you had to be one of the guys.
In Boyland, you had to learn to take a joke, even if that meant being called a stripper. Even if it meant hearing that you were “smoking hot” and that it was a distraction. Even if it meant being told you should get a “chastity belt” because you were spending too much time with the boys on the team.
I moved to a different studio not long after that one. I guess I didn’t think it was all that funny, either. I also didn’t think it was funny when I got a photo of my own house mailed to me, with a threatening letter. Or even now, when I get death threats online. Sometimes it can be exhausting to have a sense of humor in Boyland.
After sixteen years in the video game industry—as a writer, a designer, a consultant, a creative director, and ultimately a studio cofounder and co-owner—I left. I began writing YA novels and, as a result, began working with writers, editors, publicists, librarians, teachers, marketing executives, and publishers who were almost all women. It was liberating and thrilling. My husband retired and became, for the time being, a stay-at-home dad. Many of my close female friends were writers who supported their own families. Some had come from journalism, some from politics, some from the tech industry. We commiserate over the crap we’ve been through, and the crap we won’t go through now. We write strong female characters. We have daughters. We hope for better. We hope for more. We tell ourselves that times have changed, that they’ll keep changing. Then we hope it’s true.
My oldest daughter graduated from Columbia University with a degree in computer science and statistics in 2016. She’s smart and strategic and knows more about video games than most of the boys in Boyland. And yet, when she applied for game-programming jobs last spring, I was surprised to hear one of her first interview questions: Why aren’t you going into sales or marketing? You shouldn’t feel like you have to be a rocket scientist.… She went on to find a job at an e-sports company. She knows Boyland as well as I do.
We are two generations of girls in Boyland, my daughter and I, though I am no longer young enough to be called a girl, and the industry is increasingly no longer young enough to openly remain a Boyland. Our progress is subtle, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. I still sometimes work as a consultant for video game companies, but only on my terms, and only when I want to. I also write YA, and now comics; I write a girl superhero series for Marvel—Mighty Captain Marvel—where my editor is a woman, Sana Amanat. She is also the head of Content and Character Development, which makes her pretty much the Boss of Boyland. We still both get death threats from trolls. When we go to the Marvel Creative Summits, we are sometimes still the only girls in the room. I still dress like a boy and swear like a pirate.
But do you know what the difference is? Now we have ways to reach out and talk about Boyland, not just with one another but with younger women, too. Now we openly talk about advocacy groups, representation, and mentoring. Now we track the crappy hiring statistics in Silicon Valley. Now we teach girls to program. Now we call our local and national representatives. Now we march on Washington and across the world. Now we have voices. Now we have platforms. Now we have allies. Now we have one another. Now we fight.
NOW WE HAVE VOICES. NOW WE HAVE PLATFORMS. NOW WE HAVE ALLIES. NOW WE HAVE ONE ANOTHER. NOW WE FIGHT.
Now Rey has a lightsaber. Now Captain Marvel has a movie. Now the Black Widow appears in toy lines. Now the Force is with us. How long will I still have to wait for my Girl Dumbledore and Girl Yoda and Girl Gandalf?
We won’t wait much longer. At least, our daughters won’t. We’ve made sure of that much. The attack on Boyland has finally begun.